After nine years and a journey of 3 billion miles (4.8 billion km), NASA's New Horizons robotic probe will be woken from hibernation to begin its unprecedented mission: the study of the icy dwarf planet Pluto and its home, the Kuiper Belt.

A pre-set alarm clock is due to rouse New Horizons from its electronic slumber at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) on Saturday.

The scientific observation of Pluto, its entourage of moons and other bodies in the solar system's frozen backyard begins Jan. 15, program managers said.

Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy mini-planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune. It is the last unexplored region of the solar system.

"It's hard to underestimate the evolution that's taking place in our view of the architecture and content of our solar system as result of the discovery … of the Kuiper Belt," lead researcher Alan Stern said.

Confirmation that New Horizons is out of hibernation should come at 9:30 p.m. EST (0230 GMT). The probe will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14.

Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been a mystery, partly because of its comparatively small size. Scientists struggled to explain why a planet with a radius of just 740 miles (1,190 km) could come to exist beyond the giant worlds of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

"We wondered why Pluto was a misfit," Stern said.

In 1992, astronomers discovered that Pluto, located about 40 times farther away from the sun than Earth, was not alone in its diminutive size, prompting the International Astronomical Union to reconsider its definition of "planet".

In 2006, with New Horizons already on its way, Pluto was stripped of its title as the ninth planet in the solar system and became a dwarf planet, of which more than 1,000 have since been discovered in the Kuiper Belt.

With New Horizons approaching Pluto's doorstep, scientists are eager for their first close-up look at this unexplored domain.

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It was launched before iPhones were around, Windows XP was still being sold, Boris Yeltsin was still breathing, many people thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the next Democratic Presidential nominee, if not the next POTUS, you could buy new Pontiac, Saturn, Mercury, Saab, and Hummer cars, dial up internet was still a thing, Bob Barker is the host of The Price is Right, most Americans had never heard of Fukishima, and Kim Jong-il was still running North Korea, to give you an idea of how much things have changed in the years since then.

From 2.9 billion miles away, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft let its handlers know on Saturday that it has awakened from hibernation and is ready for the climax of its nine-year trip to Pluto.

The first signals were received at the mission's control center at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland via a giant radio antenna in Australia just before 9:30 p.m. ET, nearly four and a half hours after it was sent by the piano-sized probe. It takes that long for signals to travel between there and here at the speed of light.

From now on, New Horizons will remain awake continuously through its Bastille Day flyby of Pluto and its moons next July 14. After a few weeks of preparation, the probe's instruments will start making long-range observations on Jan. 15.

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So January 15th will give us a chance to see Pluto as we approach. I love that we'll be able to track its progress as well. We'll finally get to see Pluto with our own eyes, and up close (in July we'll get the closest view). This is something I have wanted to see for a very long time.

So January 15th will give us a chance to see Pluto as we approach. I love that we'll be able to track its progress as well. We'll finally get to see Pluto with our own eyes, and up close (in July we'll get the closest view). This is something I have wanted to see for a very long time.

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Ha! You blew your cover by inadvertently saying "with our own eyes". No human eyes will see Pluto, only machine eyes. You've done a fair job of passing yourself off as an organic up till now, with a fake background story and all, but the jig is up, tin man.

Oh, and I've not seen it mentioned anywhere, but there's a piece of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne onboard the New Horizons probe. After he won the X-Prize NASA called him up and asked for a piece of it to put on the probe before it was launched. There's video of Rutan talking about it, and he can barely hold back his tears as describes getting the call.

I've been following it closely over the last 9 years. I was surprised they would ever get it funded and launched. IIRC, two earlier versions were canceled and originally there were going to be two probes so they could see both sides of Pluto.

As for Pluto not being a planet. Who knows. Classifications can change. Personally I think the criteria they used to downgrade it is ridiculous

We can call it a planet because it squeaked in before we knew better. It's planet-fathered in.

Still we will finally get to see Pluto. I hope there is a giant abandoned alien base on it to freak us out. Wouldn't that kick-start a space race?????

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There's a novel, sort of about that, called Charon's Ark. In it, a plane goes missing, and winds up on Pluto, which turns out to be a kind of a cosmic zoo created by aliens. It was certainly the first thing which popped into my head when that Malaysian flight went missing. If New Horizons spots it on Pluto, I'm totally going to be freaked out.

NASA’s New Horizons is bringing with it the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh – its discoverer – as it cruises towards the now dwarf-planet or ‘plutoid’. The probe will be close enough on January 15 to start observing Pluto.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered the ice and rock-laden Pluto in 1930 and one of his final requests was that his ashes be sent into space. Tombaugh died on January 17, 1997. Fulfilling that wish NASA has fitted the upper deck of New Horizons probe with a small container containing Tombaugh’s ashes.

“Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system’s ‘third zone'”, reads the inscription on the container.

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It will probably be a very long time before a probe carries the remains of a dwarf planet's discoverer to that planet. Its a shame they couldn't have afforded the weight necessary to be able to fire Tombaugh's remains at Pluto as the probe flew by.

It's interesting the extent to which Charon's gravity influences Pluto. They are both in wobbly orbits around a point that sits between the two. Technically, this is also true of the Earth/Moon or Earth/Sun relationships, but in those latter two, the center of orbit is very close to the center of the larger body, whereas in this case, it's out in space. That's a pretty good demonstration of why Pluto fails as a planet. that is definitely not clearing the orbit of other objects.

Stars are easily defined - they generate energy by nuclear fusion and have to be above a certain mass. Planets are, IIRC, currently defined as bodies whose own gravity pulls them into a spheroid shape and have cleared all smaller bodies that aren't their own moons from their orbital path.

The latest photos from NASA’s New Horizons’ probe shows quite the crowd around Pluto. We’ve seen three of Pluto’s moons. New Horizons first detected Charon in 2013. Hydra and Nix followed in July 2014 and January 2015. Two weeks ago, it spotted Kerberos and Styx.

Stars are easily defined - they generate energy by nuclear fusion and have to be above a certain mass. Planets are, IIRC, currently defined as bodies whose own gravity pulls them into a spheroid shape and have cleared all smaller bodies that aren't their own moons from their orbital path.

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I still say Pluto qualifies in regards to the last. Are there any other bodies that don't orbit Pluto anywhere close to Pluto's orbital path? I didn't think there was anything within literally billions of kilometers.

Pluto's orbit is erratic, taking it inside Neptune's orbit, and then out to the Kuiper Belt. It does not clear a path through the Kuiper Belt, which makes it a dwarf planet along with Makemake, and Haumea. Pluto's primary moon, Charon, is almost half the size as Pluto itself (and Pluto is smaller than Earth's Moon), and many feel it's equivalent enough in size to qualify as a double planetary system.

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